“Hey Lefty, why are
you so upset?”
“Oh, how would you
understand? You, right-handed people, are all the same. Living in
your right handed world and dominating all those of us who are
left-handed. Making us accommodate when it comes to guitars, car cup
holders as well as desks in schools and lots of other things. It's
obvious you don't have the same emotional structure as myself.”
“How would you feel
about going out and letting me treat you to some beer and ribs at the
sports bar?”
“Okay.”
“I don't think we're
as different as you think.”
“I want to sit on the
left side of the sports bar and park on the left side of the
building.”
“It's a deal.”
Below are excerpts from
the story with my valuable insights in italics.
For the research,
Casasanto and his team stimulated the two brain hemispheres of 25
healthy patients with a painless electrical current for 20 minutes
daily over five days. The research team wanted to see if they could
cause their subjects to experience approach emotions like enthusiasm,
interest, and excitement through stimulation depending on whether
they were right-handed, left-handed, or in-between. Participants were
asked to report levels of positive emotions like pride and happiness
at the start and end of the study period.
I can only imagine how
they recruited the 25 participants for this study. Did they tell
these people they are going to go to a lab and get jolted for 20
minutes a day by an electrical current for five days? I assume financial compensation was mentioned and these people were told the
researchers would make it worth their while. I hope.
It is possible the
study participants may experience enthusiasm as well as excitement at
the thought they are getting paid for being part of the research
study. They could also feel pride and happiness they survived of
getting zapped by an electrical current for 20 minutes a day for five
days.
“Tell me more about
the new job you have.”
“Well, I go to a
laboratory, they hook me up and zap me with electrical current.”
“I don't understand.
Didn't you go to school?”
“Yes, I went to a trade
school to be an electrician.”
“Now, it makes
sense.”
As hypothesized,
right-handed participants who were zapped in the left hemisphere
reported greater levels of positivity, as did lefties when their
right hemisphere was stimulated. When they were zapped in the same
hemisphere as their dominant hand, there was no change in such
emotions.
As the old saying goes
“Now that I know this, what do I do with it?”
Does this mean if you
are feeling depressed and you need to be zapped, they have to know
what side of your head to zap so you'll experience positivity? Does
this mean some people should carry a taser with them and if they start
feeling depressed, they just zap a side of their head with the taser
to feel better?
What happens if medical
professionals make a mistake and zap the wrong hemisphere of a
person's brain? Could the left-handed person then become a homicidal
maniac because some incompetent individual zapped the wrong part of
their brain? I'm sure the family members of the wrongfully zapped
left-handed person would speak to a personal injury attorney to see
if they have a case of brain hemisphere zapping malpractice. It may
eventually develop into a new area of the law. I'm sure the victim
of the malpractice zapping could get serious compensation if they
started using their right hand.
“This suggests strong
righties should get normal treatment, but they make up only 50
percent of the population. Strong lefties should get the opposite
treatment and people in the middle shouldn’t get the treatment at
all.”
How do you determine if
a person is a strong leftie? Do you throw stuff at them and see if
they catch it with their left hand? Do you see if they write and
throw stuff back at you with their left hand? There has to be a test
to determine your degree of left-handedness.
It seems right-handed
crazy people have nothing to worry about and can get normal
treatment. We will get the standardized brain zapping treatment. It
is left-handed crazy people who will have all the problems. Maybe
left-handed people should wear a medical alert bracelet that says in
case of mental illness zap the opposite side of a right-handed
mentally ill person's brain. I'm sure doing this could avoid a lot
of problems.
Below is a link to the
story.
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